Scott Brown forms exploratory committee for Senate run

NASHUA — Former Republican Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown today said he has formed an exploratory committee to consider a run against U.S. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H.

Staff report

NASHUA — Former Republican Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown on Friday said he has formed an exploratory committee to consider a run against U.S. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H.

Brown made his announcement at the Northeast Republican Leadership Conference. He stressed his ties to the Seacoast, saying his parents “met when my mom was a waitress at Hampton Beach, and my dad an airman at Pease Air Force Base. They were living on Islington Street in Portsmouth when I came along. Pease had no hospital, so I was born at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard.” Brown has long had a seasonal home in Rye and has returned to New Hampshire to live.

Should Brown enter the race, he will face at least two others in a primary. Former state Sen. Jim Rubens and former U.S. Sen. Bob Smith have declared their candidacy for the Republican nomination.Brown described his childhood in Portsmouth as “pretty rough. Mom and dad were married four times each and I lived in 17 houses by the time I was 18. We were on public assistance for a while. And now and then, as a young boy and teenager, I got into trouble.”

But he said there were great memories as well.

“There were summers at Hoyt’s cabins … exploring on the rocks along the Rye Coast … playing around at Hampton Beach … walking through the gardens and catching a show at Prescott Park … or strolling through Strawbery Banke with my grandfather telling stories about how life used to be in Portsmouth.” Brown said those places on the Seacoast were “a refuge” that “helped to draw me back here as a full-time resident of New Hampshire.

Brown said he knows his past “doesn’t always set the best example. And it might not sound like the making of a Republican. Yet when I cast my first vote for president in 1980, I knew which candidate talked my language — the language of opportunity and personal freedom — and that was Ronald Reagan.”

Brown said he is embarking on a “Main Streets & Livings Rooms” tour across New Hampshire. He added that in his travels around the state the past year, he has seen Republicans are “gathering strength, ready to give their best efforts in this election year.”

“And if we do things right,” he said, “this year will bring a defining victory for our cause.”

Brown said it wasn’t long ago that Democrats felt “like they just couldn’t lose.”

“You could tell they were comfortable because they kept shoving Obamacare at us and didn’t much care how the American people felt about it,” he said, adding Democrats are now “in panic mode.” “A big political wave is about to break in America and the Obamacare Democrats are on the wrong side of it.”

He derided Obamacare, saying it began with the promise: “If you like your health plan, you can keep it, period.” Instead, he added, it became “You’re going to change your plan and like it, period.”

Brown said Americans can get rid of Obamacare if they don’t like it, but only if Republicans are elected to Congress.

Brown said the health care law is the centerpiece of an agenda holding America back.

“That agenda is keeping unemployment high, raising taxes, over-regulating the private sector, hurting middle class families, overwhelming this country in debt, and weakening America’s standing in the world,” he said. “We need to get off the road of big government, and focus again on private enterprise, new jobs for our people, and basic federal duties starting with the rights of our citizens and the security of our nation.”

Brown said he’s concerned about “a constant expansion of federal power,” citing President Barack Obama’s use of executive powers and the IRS probe scandals.

“Since when can a president ignore or rewrite acts of Congress as he sees fit, as this president has done?” Brown asked. “By what right does the IRS get off targeting groups unfavored by the federal establishment?”

He also criticized the Obama administration’s stimulus act, saying it added debt instead of jobs and was a “bonanza for insiders and special interests or friends of politicians.”

Brown said he has done some reflecting since he lost in his Senate re-election bid to Democrat Elizabeth Warren in 2012. While he called himself a proud Republican, he added that he has “always been able to work with every person of good will, whatever their party. And we sure need more of that spirit in Washington right now...”

Brown said he will listen closely to state residents in coming weeks as he makes a final decision on whether or not to run against Shaheen.

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